The Black Knave

by Patricia Potter

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  PRAISE FOR THE WRITING OF PATRICIA POTTER

  “Patricia Potter is a master storyteller, a powerful weaver of romantic tales.” —Mary Jo Putney, New York Times–bestselling author

  “One of the romance genre’s finest talents.” —Romantic Times

  “Patricia Potter will thrill lovers of the suspense genre as well as those who enjoy a good romance.” —Booklist

  “Potter proves herself a gifted writer as artisan, creating a rich fabric of strong characters whose wit and intellect will enthrall even as their adventures entertain.” —BookPage

  “When a historical romance [gets] the Potter treatment, the story line is pure action and excitement, and the characters are wonderful.” —BookBrowse

  “Potter has an expert ability to invest in fully realized characters and a strong sense of place without losing momentum in the details, making this novel a pure pleasure.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review of Beloved Warrior

  “[Potter] proves that she’s adept at penning both enthralling historicals and captivating contemporary novels.” —Booklist, starred review of Dancing with a Rogue

  The Black Knave

  Patricia Potter

  Prologue

  Scotland, 1746

  So much blood.

  Rory Forbes would never again fear hell, for it was here now.

  The thunder of cannon, the clash of swords, the screams. The moans. Dear God, the moans of the dying.

  Except God had obviously deserted this stretch of moor and bog called Culloden. And the cries would haunt him until the day he died.

  Only minutes after the afternoon assault, the heather moorland was soaked in blood. Wounded men on the ground were being systematically slaughtered, those limping off the battlefield struck down.

  Rory had been trained well. He’d killed several men already, but they had been trying to kill him. Now—within an hour’s time—the battle was all but over, but the killing continued. Brutal. Merciless. He wanted no part of it.

  “No quarter!” He heard Cumberland’s order passed from one man to another. “No quarter.”

  He dropped his blood-soaked sword and stood amidst death, then heard a moan behind him. A man in MacPherson plaid lay crumpled just feet from him. Blood poured from a wound in his chest, and a frothy pink bubbled from his lips. “Water,” the MacPherson whispered.

  He heard his father yelling at him. “Finish him.”

  Buy Rory couldn’t. Instead, he stooped next to the man and offered his flagon to the man’s lips, letting the water drip into the man’s mouth. Several drops passed, then he was brushed aside by his brother, Donald, and before he could react, a sword plunged into the man’s breast.

  “No quarter!” His brother took up the call, the lust of killing darkening his eyes, flushing a face already red with blood.

  With horror Rory looked at his older brother. Rory had been fostered by an English family and taught chivalry, but there was none this day. He heard the screams of women over the hill—the camp followers—and his heart constricted, even as he heard his brother’s bitter word aimed at him. “Coward.”

  Rory turned away and walked from the moor, knowing he could do nothing to stop the slaughter but refusing any longer to be an accomplice in murder.

  “Rory!” He heard his father’s voice. “Damn your hide, come back.”

  The curses and threats of his father meant nothing. Nor did the taunt of coward from his brother. He was not going to be part of the continuing slaughter where whole clans fell before the king’s artillery, where raw courage was met with something far less, and the tattered remains were struck down in retreat.

  He had never seen such courage as that displayed by the Highlanders. He knew he was on the wrong side, had known it, in fact, since the message came to him in Edinburgh commanding him to return home to Braemoor.

  But after his father’s kinsman, Lord President Forbes, declared neutrality and stood against those who joined Prince Charles, Rory’s father took his own branch of the family to join the Duke of Cumberland, who promised land and favors.

  Rory had given precious little thought to loyalty and honor. He’d hated Braemoor and all the cruelty he’d known there. He’d left the place, penniless, to make his way in Edinburgh, where quick hands and a ready wit had provided a fine income in gambling houses and a willing bed from ladies both high and low. His family had expected nothing of him. He lived up to their expectations. He had, in fact, courted his reputation of wastrel, the better to throw in his father’s face.

  But even he could not ignore the summons to battle. Not without being disinherited, not without being called coward. He’d not been ready to risk the first, and too proud the second. For a brief moment or so, mayhap he’d even thought honor was involved.

  There was no honor today.

  He still heard the clash of weapons. Small battles continued, but the result was clear. The Highlanders were being decimated, clan by clan, by overwhelmingly superior forces. He’d heard Cumberland’s order to kill every Jacobite, and by God, he was not going to be one of Cumberland’s executioners. He had supped and gambled and drunk with many of the Highlanders months ago when Prince Charlie had occupied Edinburgh. How many of them lay dead now?

  Rory could barely breathe. He had thought he had no heart, that it had been hardened by years of abuse by his father. He had been excoriated for his worthlessness so long and so fervently that he had come to believe it. But now he thought his heart would break; it had only gone into hiding before.

  “Rory, damn you, come back.”

  He heard the voices but kept walking away from his clan. He ignored their curses, their entreaties.

  He reached a hill and looked down. Soldiers in red uniforms were everywhere. Some robbed the dead, others gave the coup de grace to the fallen. His tartan was stiff with blood, his arms—and probably his face—streaked with it. He took off his bonnet with its black cockade—the king’s color, and fitting it was—and threw it to the ground. He continued to walk away, toward the horses held by several men in British uniforms.

  He found his own mount, a large gray gelding.

  “Going to run ’em down, sir?” one of the men asked.

  “We crushed them Jacobite bastards,” said another with pride, his eyes shining with blood lust even though his coat was unstained and his sword untested.

  Rory didn’t reply. He swung up into the saddle and guided the horse away from the sounds of the battlefield, toward a stream that he knew ran clear from the hills. He wanted to wash the blood from his hands. He knew he would never wash it from his soul.

  He saw retreating Jacobites in the distance. He could still hear the screams and moans from the moor as he tightened his knees and urged his horse into a trot. He rode for an hour, perhaps more before nearing Forbes’s land. He wound his way through the harsh landscape of scraggly brush and hard rock toward an unbloodied stream. There was a hunting hut there, one he used when he needed a sanctuary. It was a place where he could wash the blood from his body.

  As he approached the stream, he heard a scream and cantered toward it, stopping his horse when he saw the three women and two bairns. Three British soldiers had obviously pulled them from the thatched hut. Before he could reach them, one of the soldiers plunged a bayonet into an older woman while a younger one leaned over a small child, covering its body with her own.

  “Stay your hands!” Rory yelled as he galloped over.

  The three soldiers looked up, their eyes going to his head to determine whether he was the king’s man or a J
acobite. He was very aware of his absence of a bonnet as the soldiers braced for an attack. Suspicion darkened their faces.

  He felt naked without the sword he’d abandoned on the battlefield. But he took his pistol from the belt, fully aware it had but one charge. He had that, and his dirk. Nothing more. Except fury.

  “The enemy is over the hills,” he said curtly.

  “The duke said we was to kill any rebel—man or woman.”

  “I say otherwise,” Rory said as he watched one woman huddle over the fallen one, the other cradling the children in her skirts.

  “You a rebel showing your backside?”

  “Nay,” Rory said evenly. “But I suggest you return to the others.”

  “Not until I get a leg over,” one of the men said, reaching out his arm and grabbing the youngest woman, pulling her to him.

  Rory realized he was committing treason, that he could be tried and hung for interfering with Cumberland’s orders. He didn’t care. He still heard the sound of distant gunfire, and looked at the soldiers with contempt. These men weren’t on a battlefield. They were slinking around, seeking to rape and pillage those weaker than themselves. He feared many more would scavenge these hills, indeed all the hills of Scotland, in the next weeks.

  “Take your hands off her.” Even he recognized the menace in his words. His knees tightened around the horse as he released the reins and his left hand reached to his side to take the dirk from his belt. He barely noticed his sporran slipping free, spilling its contents across the ground.

  One of the soldiers backed up, aiming his own pistol as another took his sword from its scabbard. The third man continued to hold the woman, as the two children clung to her skirts.

  Rory fired his pistol at the soldier holding the firearm, and watched with satisfaction as the man went down; he had no reservation about killing these men. He freed his legs from the stirrups and jumped the second soldier, aiming his dirk for the man’s chest. The man dodged the blow, and with more agility than Rory thought possible swung his sword. The blade sliced through Rory’s arm.

  Ignoring the sudden pain, he tripped his attacker and sent the man sprawling to the ground. His foot trapped the hand holding the sword. He reached down and took it just as he heard a woman’s cry from behind him.

  He whirled to see the third man release her and lunge at him with an upraised dirk. He swung the sword, ripped the man’s chest open, and watched him fall, then turned back to the man on the ground.

  Cursing, the second soldier tried to pull his dirk from his belt.

  “I wouldna be doing that,” Rory said, placing the tip of the sword at the man’s throat. “Take your friend and get out of here.” He knew he might be signing his own death warrant. He wore no bonnet signifying his allegiance, but he might well be identified later. He could only hope the blood and sweat and days-old beard might protect him. But he had no more stomach for killing.

  The soldier looked at the sword tip that lingered near his throat, and nodded, but hate glistened in his eyes. He slowly, carefully, rose, his eyes obviously marking Rory’s face; he would remember it.

  Rory watched as the soldier’s gaze rested on the man who had been shot and was quite obviously dead. Then he leaned down and helped pick up his wounded companion, and the two of them stumbled back toward the moor.

  Rory waited until they were at a safe distance, moving away, then turned to the women. The older one regarded him with steady eyes. Her bairns still clutched at her skirts; one stared with great brown eyes, the other—a girl—cried quietly.

  “God bless you, sir,” she said.

  The other woman kneeled next to the dead older woman. She stood. Her dark eyes blazed with fury. “They killed her.”

  “You must flee from here,” Rory said.

  “You’re a Jacobite.” ’Twas a statement, not a question. His tartan, he knew, was nondescript. It could have belonged to any number of clans.

  “It doesna matter who I am. The Jacobites have lost. How did you happen to come here …?”

  “I am Kate McDonald. This is my sister-in-law, Jeannie. My husband and his brother are with Prince Charlie, and we came with them. But they sent us away at dawn. I think he feared … we might be in danger. Can you tell us anything about them?”

  The blood on his clothes could well be her husband’s. The knowledge weighed on him like a boulder. He wanted to reassure them, but he could not. Few men would live through the slaughter and its aftermath.

  His silence seemed answer enough. The women wrung their hands, their faces aging with understanding.

  “We have to go to them,” Kate said.

  “No,” Rory said harshly. “Where is your home?”

  “To the north.”

  He swore to himself as he looked around. “You have no horses?”

  “We moved with the army.”

  He swallowed hard. He’d heard all the orders. Cumberland wanted every Jacobite killed. Women. Children. He didn’t want one left to raise the Jacobite banner against his brother, the king, again.

  Rory shook his head. “Do you have friends you can go to? Clansmen?”

  The younger woman spoke up then. “I will stay and look for my husband.”

  “And the bairns? Do you wish to sacrifice them also, madam? Do you believe your husbands would want that?”

  Kate’s arms went around the children and she clutched them to her.

  “You cannot stay here,” he said. “Cumberland’s troops will scour the countryside. It would be best if you went to a cave up in that hill. I’ll show the way and send someone with food for you. When it is safe, we can find a way to get you back to your clan.”

  “Why do you do this?” The older woman looked at him suspiciously.

  “Because it suits me,” he said. “Do you wish my protection or not?” His answer was far more curt than he’d intended. He’d never intended this … involvement, either, but he couldn’t let women and children be hunted like animals. He would surely lose his soul, then.

  The two women looked at each other, then at the children. The mother nodded reluctantly.

  The two soldiers were only specks now. They were moving with the speed of tortoises, but they were moving and would soon send someone after the Jacobites.

  There was not much time.

  He stooped down and picked up the sporran. A deck of cards had spilled out on the ground. He’d entertained himself with those cards during the endless wait for battle. He’d taken no small sums from his clansmen.

  Rory picked up the cards. A knave of spades sat atop the deck.

  “Who are you?” the older woman asked.

  “That is something I would prefer to keep to myself,” he replied.

  “Then how …”

  “Whoever I send will carry this,” he said, his thumb sending the card flying up into the air and toward her.

  She caught it, her eyes going to the face of it.

  “The black knave,” she observed quietly.

  “Aye,” he replied, then he caught the reins of his horse, led him to where the forlorn group stood.

  “I canna leave her,” the older woman said, looking down at the dead woman.

  “I’ll see to a decent burial,” Rory said. “I give you my vow. But you must save yourself and your bairns now.”

  She hesitated, then allowed him to help her on the horse. He lifted the two children up. The older woman would have to walk, as would he. But the cave was not far. He moved quickly, but the older woman kept apace. Thirty minutes later they had reached a cave, and he saw them inside, then covered the opening with underbrush, left his flagon and the oatmeal he’d carried with him.

  “No more than two days,” he said. “Someone will come by for you. Do not forget …”

  Through the dim light, the older woman smiled. “We will not, nor will we forget the Black Knave.”

  One

  Rory had never wanted to be laird.

  Today he wanted it even less.

  But he st
ood at his father’s grave on a cool, wet, dreary afternoon as members of the Forbes clan said farewells to their chieftain. Not even the bagpipes noted the burial of his father. After Culloden, their use had been frowned upon by Cumberland and King George, and there were rumors they would be outlawed completely.

  He knew he should feel grief, but he didn’t, only a mild regret that there was none. His father had hated him, and demonstrated it every day of Rory’s life. If the estate and title had not been entailed, Rory had no doubt he would have been disinherited.

  Nearly two months had passed since the battle at Culloden Moor. His brother, Donald, had died first, finally succumbing to a lingering fever after receiving a minor wound at Culloden. Ironically, it had been inflicted by his own sword when he had been chasing a Highlander and had tripped over a body. Rory’s father died two weeks later during a wild, angry ride at night across the hills. He’d apparently been hit by a low branch and found early the next morning with a broken neck.

  Rory knew the eyes of his clan were on him. None was happy that he was to become the new Marquis of Braemoor. His father had made his contempt for his younger son obvious, particularly after Culloden. He had not spoken a word to him after Donald fell ill.

  And now Braemoor was Rory’s. He dinna want it.

  There were others who did, however, including his cousin Neil, who was glowering at him over the grave. Rory knew that Neil was wishing it was he in that grave, not the old chief.

  Well, he would have to wait his turn. Rory had plans of his own at the moment. He rubbed his face, now cleanly shaven, as it had been since Culloden. He’d also cut his hair short and currently wore an English powdered wig, the hair tied neatly behind with a gaudy ribbon. In the past weeks he’d become even more the dandy, using his gambling winnings to purchase brightly colored trews and waistcoats. He was wearing a dark purple one this morning in honor of his father, whereas the other mourners—at least those who could afford it—wore black.

  The new Marquis of Braemoor could do any bloody thing he wanted.

  Up to a point.